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Mycot

WA Gyms, tis the season

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mac, i don't have the pic in more pixels. i took it in low pixels because i haven't posted pics before and so didn't know what was the best size for uploading. most of those shrooms are melted now, but they are literally minutes from my house, so, once they fruit up again i'll take another pic. what pixels you after and still postable here?

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Thanks for the great pics Idiot and Wassonova. Besides their great beauty they're a valuable addition to our knowledge of Gyms in Australia.

Regarding the color of the stems there's some variation across different phenotypes and Stamets may have to review his discription. Grgurinovic in a description of the stems of G.mullaunius(synonymous with G.purpuratus) says:- up to 37mm long, rather stout, a little attenuated upwards, somewhat striat or fibrillose, tough, palid yellowish brown above, concolourous with the pileus(cap) below.

Rees did some genetic sequencing on WA Gyms with light-coloured stems(practically white) and the sequence was that of G.purpuratus.

The colourful pic seems to be one species(G.purpuratus) with graduations of colour between orange and red. Good pictures especially macros will enable us to to gain a better understanding of the variations in appearance of Australian G.purpuratus.

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mac, i don't have the pic in more pixels. i took it in low pixels because i haven't posted pics before and so didn't know what was the best size for uploading. most of those shrooms are melted now, but they are literally minutes from my house, so, once they fruit up again i'll take another pic. what pixels you after and still postable here?

When taking pics you want to take it in the the highest resolution available and use the macro function for close shots. You can always crop and resize pics for various uses later.

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greetings,

took some more photos today of what i think may be Gyms, based on the literature that Mycot originally brought to our attention.

see what you think:

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G'day guys

After I received some messages from some of our friends regarding the differences between G.Allantopus & G.Purpuratus I've decided to upload some photos that I had on my mobile.

P.S I have some better photos on my camera which I will upload later;

G.Allantopus

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G.Purpuratus

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G.Purpuralus one month old

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G.Allantopus on left and G.Purpuratus on right (hope that you can see the difference now)

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The only thing that can confirm G.Purpuratus is the blueish bruises 20 mins after you pick it up.

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Great to see you still researching Australian Gym. spp. Mycot.

How's things? It's been ages since I last talked to you. As you may have guessed, I no longer use Mycotopia...

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Great to see you still researching Australian Gym. spp. Mycot.

How's things? It's been ages since I last talked to you. As you may have guessed, I no longer use Mycotopia...

Yeah, they're a totally fascinating and beautiful genus with much still to be known. Even just looking at the macromorphology of the great pics here by Idoit and Wassonova, those in the Survey Reports and past threads here at the Corroboree, one is left wondering how many distinct species of active aussie gyms are actually being depicted.

There are also good indications elsewhere that there are additional active aussie gyms yet to be described and discovered, so yeah its an exciting field.

I've been too damn busy recently, which I'm trying to bring under control. It's good to hear from you and welcome to the Corroboree. :)

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Thanks for the additional pics Idiot and Wassonova, they just get better. Going by the macromorphology the ones depicted as G.purpuratus appear to be that species going by identifications in the Survey reports. Recent research on phylogenetic gym taxonomy has them grouped into clades with a number of the active species falling into a clade with similarities in macroscopic characeristics and appearance.(squamulose caps and/or red/purple colors). Macroscopically the red gyms depicted in this thread all fall within that active clade.

Not all of the active gyms will blue readily so here are a couple tricks that may induce bluing for additional confirmation to that above. Carrying the harvest in a bag for a short while will have the shrooms knocking against each other a bit. This will often induce bluing in some of the caps 20 minutes later.

Split the stems and have them dry say 20 minutes and look for bluing of the flesh at the very base.

One that I have read of but haven't tried is to bruise/damage the stems and then put them into the fridge for eight hours and then check for bluing.

Good to hear these are appearing as late as august. For hunters not from WA, G.purpuratus is also known from Vic and NSW and there are likely active gym sp in every state thoughout the year. While I mentioned rains earlier in the thread, one of the survey reports mentioned finding G.purpuratus while it hadn't rained for a while and there were few fungi to be found. This was because logs had retained moisture and so continued fruiting.

P.S I have some better photos on my camera which I will upload later

If your still around and still got these we'd love to see em. :drool2:

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activety was extremely weak to nonexistant in specimens I bioassayed collected in the north east of Melb.

Not a very encouraging report though lacking in details.

One thing that should be noted is that younger fruitbodies have at times been reputed to be more active than mature specimens.

All the same we have a number of active gym species in aus and some of these are likely to be relatively low in active principles.

In these cases combining with syrian rue or other MAOI may often be a very good option.

Anecdotal reports suggest the combination of gyms + rue to be particularly well liked.

Edited by Mycot

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Anecdotal reports suggest the combination of gyms + rue to be particularly well liked.

Really? Can you provide any links?

By the way Mycot, have you read "Treading the fine line between small-statured Gymnopilus and excentrically stipitate Galerina species in Australia" by B. J. Rees, et. al. (Mycological Research (1999), 103:4:427-442)?

After reading it, it has made me so much less confident in identifying Gymopilus species. There are two small species around here which I had previously considered to be gyms, but now I'm unsure.

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Really? Can you provide any links?

Ah yeah, really. Can't provide a link for the gym + rue anecdotes of which there were several as they were personal communications. Several times also had communicated to me of the shrooms + rue combination being well liked and would imagine this to be even more so with gyms because of the kava type compounds present.

Gracie and Zarkov communicated some years ago that the shrooms + rue combination doubled the strength while at the same time giving it a more mellower and down to earth feel. Others report that the combination is more out there with the McKenna brothers wild experiences in the amazon being attributed to shrooms + caapi.

There are a couple shrooms + rue reports at Erowid Experiences, and a Panaeolus subbalteatus + caapi report at the Shroomery but I didn't find these particularly noteworthy. In leu of being able to provide a gym + rue link I'll provide one where gyms are favorably assessed Here

Feanor one of the posters in this thread also has thread where he describes a gym + cube trip as the best trip of his life.

Those contemplating use of MAO inhibitors should be aware of the neccesary precautions.

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By the way Mycot, have you read "Treading the fine line between small-statured Gymnopilus and excentrically stipitate Galerina species in Australia" by B. J. Rees, et. al. (Mycological Research (1999), 103:4:427-442)?

After reading it, it has made me so much less confident in identifying Gymopilus species. There are two small species around here which I had previously considered to be gyms, but now I'm unsure.

Yes I read that paper some time ago but had to squizz though it again to refresh my memory of it.

For perspective it should be remembered that what they were attempting to do in the paper was to find one or more characteristics (macro and/or micro), a universal fail-safe test as it were, by which the two genera could be clearly separated. Something that applied to ALL Gymnopilus species but was absent in ANY Galerina species or vice versa.

The only clear-cut means of differentiation between the two genera they found was by the presence or absence of the styryloyrone pigments bis-noryangonin and hispidin (revealed by chromatography). Present in all gymnopilus and absent in all Galerina.

I'm now wondering whether these two pigments occur in G.luteus and if not, that would at least partially invalidate this as a universal test. Back on topic, important characteristics used for identifying Gyms are size, color, cap surface texture, sporeprint colour, and stem texture. The form of and whether it an annulus is present also plays some importance in gym species identification.

To see a gym in every orange or reddish mushroom will very quickly get a person into trouble. And one should be especially cautious of finds that appear unusually funky, that is finds that are markedly different from the usual.

The golden rule of ingestion not being even contemplated if not 100% sure of an identification at least to genus applies.

Moving on, this is not to say that the two genera are closely related. The general descriptions for the two genera differ markedly (see Wikipaedia or other authority), as does the general appearance (a cursory look at the the two genera at the "Mushroom Observer" website will bear this out) so that in most cases there is little difficulty in assigning to the correct genus. However problems do occur when some species within one of the two genera begins to approach the other in characteristics or appearance. An example from the genus Gymnopilus might be G.picreus, while an example from the genus Galerina would be Ga.marginata(synonynous with Ga.autumnalis).

After an examination of description and appearance the two genera by by the above two exercises, you want to do a further thing and that is do a google-image search for the most gymnoploid Galerina pics you can find. Start off with Ga.marginata and it wont take long before you'll tire of the excercise because you'd have gained what you can from it.

After this one won't have much trouble confidently separating gymnopilus from galerina in most cases and if there's still some doubt about a specimen there's always paper or thin layer chromatography. Which may well be a fun and useful thing to know. After all there is also the deadly Cortinarius genus that is sometimes mistaken for Gymnopilus, so some familiarity with this latter genus is also well advised for confidence in gym identification and staying out of trouble.

Just came across a good thread Here which talks about gyms and galerinas.

Hopefully this rambling essay ends up being helpful rather than daunting. :)

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thanks , nice link.

mycot, since you seem like a gym expert, lol, I would love it if you let me know of any european G.junonius/spectabilis report [if you come across anything, just mentioning it, in case you remember, for future reference]

Foaf has 10 gried grams of it, picked from southern europe.... there are notably no active G.junonius from europe so far ... btw, do you know if nausea is present and/or of which degree? foaf says that certain small mushrooms of this now dried batch did show a bit greenish blueing, still a bit evident on the dried material... would it be worth it if I posted a pic?

Edited by mutant

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I've never heard of activity from G.junonius/spectabilis from Europe, or even come across a bluing specimen of that species from Europe, so yes definitely worthwhile, do post a pic.

Also curious whether it was correctly identified as I believe G.suberis from southern Europe may be active.

Did Faof find activity? With the bluing I would imagine that would be the case.

I don't think that nausea is a problem with gyms as most assays I know of have not had any problem in this regard and nausea is rarely mentioned in reports. That said I, have come across one or two overseas reports where nausea was reported at high doses. Perhaps they had indigestion.

Overall I think that nausea isn't a problem with gyms and likely better than most shrooms in this regard.

Edited by Mycot

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DSCN5671.jpg

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this is actually grayish, but with somewhat greenish/bluish suggestion...

foaf hasn't tested and actually hasn't had any experience at all with psilocybe and relative mushrooms, only with acid or vine-seeds. This also makes it more difficult to take the decision to test it, since its his first and all... eventually he will... I think...

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mycot?

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Yeah Um... sorry it took me awhile to get back to this thread. I was thinking about some points made earlier in the thread and needed some correction.

Regarding those gyms from southern europe, from pics of dried specimens it's difficult to be entirely sure what gym species it is, though from their overall look and nice orange coloring G.spectabilis/junonius would be a good guess. Also from the pics posted its difficult to be entirely sure regarding activity. From the dried specimens the greenish/bluish suggestions don't come out strongly in the pic. Where coloring is grayish, for activity I'd accept this coloring when its on the inner flesh, where the flesh has been ripped and the exposed tissue oxidises. On the surface its harder to be sure since gyms are often known to change color as they age. The K(OH) test often turns gyms black and I've had this happen spontaneously in a gym species as it aged unprotected from high humidity.

The problem of G.spectabilis is that so far we have no records of activity yet from that species from anyplace other than parts of USA. This leads me to suspect that the one or more active species involved are not truly G.spectabilis and also that the active and non-active types have never been closely compared. So where does that leave us. Inactive G.spectabilis is a possibility. An active G.spectabilis look-alike or an entirely new undescribed active species is also possible. If active another possibility is that this may be G.suberis mentioned earlier.

TLC testing is an option for testing activity and I'll say without advising anything that there are no reports of poisoning or serious illness with gyms so far. :P Gyms are reputed to be very well tolerated compared with other actives. If bioassay is gone ahead with I'd advise the full 10gm finely powdered combined with 3gm rue. (save one specimen for further work) :)

Edited by Mycot

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The points I wanted to get back to was regarding the styryloyrone pigments as mentioned in B.Rees 1999 paper to differentiate gyms from galerina.

One point I'd overlooked when considering G.luteus was that testing for pigments was done on gills. :blush:

The other important point is that B.Rees in several of her later papers states that this pigment test cannot clearly differentiate gyms from other species presumably because some gym species don't contain the pigments, so that leaves us without a surefire test for the genus.

Edited by Mycot

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Thanks for feedback. :)

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i can confirm that gyms are common in lake areas south of river specially around paper bark stands,purpuratus hold a lot of promise and i believe i have seen them but havent been able to 100% confirm thats what they are.gyms ,big laughings appear to be quite common from what ive seen,i read that same report and saw fotos of the purpuratus.theres actives unknown in the area

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Yes, lake areas are reputed to be good areas for finding gyms. The genus seems to like high moisture levels and is very common found on old logs during periods of rainfall. There are times when I feel that whenever there are good rains there are gyms of one sort or another to be found. As mentioned earlier in the thread I believe there are a very good number of undescribed active gym species throughout Australia. To further bring this point home and although not from WA, below is a pic of one such that I found just this morning. This was a fine specimen with very good bluish tones on the whole center area of the cap.

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Edited by Mycot

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Looking through the fieldbook I noticed this

Dung Cap Psilocybe

I have found this and cultivated it at home on Kangaroo dung...

But have never tested out its active properties.

Has anyone ever tried?

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I've found rue with its earthy, antidepressant qualities to actually make every dose of anything feel like less,

and never like more, and never weirder or stranger :scratchhead:

It'd be good to spread some gym prints around to study.

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